NASA has given the go-ahead to start building the Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, spacecraft for its 2016 mission to rendezvous with asteroid Bennu.
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The team that will run the space agency's first attempt to collect samples from an asteroid and …

OSIRIS-REx?

Re: OSIRIS-REx?

I think 'Security' == funding. NASA's description of the mission speaks mainly about mining stuff from asteroids, downplaying the bit where (some say) Bennu has a one-tenth percent chance of colliding with Earth by 2199. I'm sure the boffins suggested finding out what Bennu is made of is helpful both to mining studies as well as figuring out what's needed to perhaps blow the thing up.

Re: OSIRIS-REx?

The chances of funding are proportional to the effort put into the (b)ac(k)ronym. Politicians gladly fund a project named OSIRIS-REx, however tenuous the connection between name and purpose, they might go for Yet Another Asteroid Bashing Attempt (YAABA) because you can at least pronounce it, but Probe For Planetoid Research (PFPR) stands little chance